


Centrifuge

by saltstreets



Series: WIP AMNESTY [1]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: FIFA World Cup 2006, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 16:50:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14698347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets/pseuds/saltstreets
Summary: It’s their summer. It lies before them like a ribbon, ready to be snatched up and waved high upon the banner that they are raising, the shining dream that they are weaving.It’s the most in love that Torsten can ever remember them being.





	Centrifuge

**Author's Note:**

> me: protests at the Brandenburger Tor with a big sign reading BRING BACK LE GRAND
> 
> also me: writes depressing breakups

 

It’s their opening match against Costa Rica and Torsten scores in the 87th minute to bring the score to 4-2, Germany. Not a necessary goal, a sweetener goal, but a fucking beautiful one, that cross from Bastian off the free-kick and Torsten just launches the ball into the back of the net, a straight, clean, powerful shot.

Micha fucks him that night, Torsten on his back and Micha grinning down at him, smothering him with kisses and tangling his fingers in Torsten’s hair as he rocks breathlessly against him, talking the whole while, melting words into Torsten’s skin. This is our year, our year, baby, we’re going to win and I love you, I love you I love you-

The affection and conviction is spilling off of him in veritable waves of words and delight. They are young and full of themselves and of each other.

I’ll finally be on the pitch with you next match, Micha tells him, moving his hips to the rhythm of his promises. I’ll be there with you and we’re going to be fucking unstoppable.

It’s their summer. It lies before them like a ribbon, ready to be snatched up and waved high upon the banner that they are raising, the shining dream that they are weaving.

It’s the most in love that Torsten can ever remember them being.

 

 

Later there is shouting and disappointment cracking through Micha’s voice, the veneer of belief scraping apart over bowed heads, and Torsten sits stonily in the lounge and doesn’t speak to anyone. He’d comforted Micha after the match and Micha hadn’t mentioned it, because no one would mention it. No one would ever mention it. But Torsten thinks it all the same, because that’s what footballers do: they fixate.

_How could I have stopped this from happening?_

It doesn’t help that in Torsten’s case the answer is a lot more straight-forward than the usual complicated spirals of _if I had only been two metres closer_ and _why didn’t I read his pass better_ and _I should have known the ball would bounce just so._ All Torsten has to think, the one horrible thought gnawing away at the inside of his skull like a hungry rat, is _I shouldn’t have thrown that punch._ He sees yellow cards when he closes his eyes and he sees the red of his training kit that he’d worn watching from the sidelines.

 

 

Torsten had never liked fairy tales when he was a kid and he didn’t like them now. They always seemed too pat: if you were bad and stupid and lazy you got punished. If you were good and clever and hard-working then gold rained down upon you. But Germany had _been_ good and clever and hard-working, yet gold remained just as elusive as ever before.

Both more and less important, he and Micha had been in love once upon a time like the beginning of some saccharine candy floss dream, all sneaking into hotel rooms and giggling over bottles of beer. But hotel rooms aren’t stone towers and alcohol on Micha’s breath isn’t anything like permanence.

Torsten takes his bronze medal and goes home.

 


End file.
